What are our moral obligations regarding extreme global poverty? If you buy an expensive coffee (and trust me I love my expensive coffee), do you do anything immoral?

According to philosopher Peter Singer, a lifestyle in a developed country full of luxuries is immoral. Those of us that spend money on luxury goods and do nothing to help those living in extreme global poverty are acting immorally. We should be doing more. And we're not.

Singer argues in various places that effective charities can save lives. Spending the money it takes to buy a fancy frappe foo foo (or, insert your favorite term for luxury coffee) could be channeled into saving the lives of others. The same money spent elsewhere could save lives. He's got stats to show this.

And this is where Bill Gates comes into the picture...

Moral Obligations Regarding Extreme Global Poverty (aka, When Bill Gates Broke Twitter)

Bill Gates tweeted an infographic. This graphic showed a significant decline in people living below the (absolute) poverty line over the last two centuries. This sparked a no-holds-barred academic quarrel-fest. Bow ties were thrown and the whole bit. Actually the debate was important. It was about where to set the absolute poverty line.

The graphic Gates posted set the extreme poverty level at living on less than $1.90/day. Some argued that the poverty line should be much high, set at over $7/day. This matters. If you set the level higher, you may not see as drastic of a decline in numbers of people living in extreme poverty from 1820-2015.

There's a great article on Vox.com (H/T Kenny Easwaran) that details the nuances of the entire kerfuffle (http://bit.ly/2UYVsLo). But I want to get back to the whole fancy frappe foo foo thing.

The Philosophical Question Remains

Regardless of where the absolute poverty line is set, all parties to the bow tie throw-down agree that we need to be doing more to reduce poverty globally--even though there's been a drop on either way of setting the level.

So, the philosophical question remains. Are we doing enough morally-speaking? Are we morally required to do more, such that when we don't do more we're doing something immoral?

I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Please leave them in the comments below.

And, as always, keep living the philosophical life!